Maria Anna, originally Pietruszyńska, was born in a not well-off family. Her father worked for the Polish railways. As a child, she attended a ballet school next to the National Theater in Warsaw, where she began her career at the age of 16. She did not limit herself to high art only. When she made her debut in opera, she performed in cabarets, where she became popular thanks to military songs. It was then when she took the nickname of Ordonówna (or Ordonka). For elites who recognized only opera and ballet, Ordonka landed up in a gutter. However, this conviction was about to change.
After World War I, the time of long-awaited respite came to Poland, a country that had suffered from constant struggle. For the first time since 120 years, Poles did not have to find consolation and hope for freedom in arts. Mass culture began. Cafes, clubs and burlesque theaters were being created. People were going to urban theaters and cabarets, where she, Hanka Ordonówna, reigned.
She was an actress and a singer. She wrote her own lyrics. She had her unique style. She started acting in films. In one of them, she performed the most famous song of the times: ‘Miłość ci wszystko wybaczy’ (‘Love will forgive you everything’), whose lyrics were written by a great poet, Julian Tuwim. Thanks to the song, Ordonka became an icon. She was popular all over Europe; she travelled and performed individual recitals in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Beirut, Damascus, Cairo and the USA.
She was able to emphasize her personality. She wore low-cut dresses. As one of the first women in Poland, she wore trousers, which caused a great scandal. She designed her stage outfits herself. She dictated the trends. She always wore hats slantways to hide a scar on her temple after a misfire. She had tried to kill herself after her sweetheart left her.
In 1931, she married an earl, Michał Tyszkiewicz. Her husband’s family did not accept the relationship treating it as a typical misalliance. Earls used to have aristocrat, not working wives dedicated to the household. Not only was Ordonka not an aristocrat, but also she did not want to give up her career, which gave her both money and fame. What her husband’s family condemned the most was the fact that she was riding a horse in a circus.
After Germany and Russia attacked Poland in 1939, she was arrested by Gestapo. Her husband got her out of the prison. They left Warsaw and moved close to Vilnius (today’s Lithuania) in Tyszkiewicz’s family estate. During the first two years of the war, Ordonka worked in a dramatic theater in Vilnius. She was not free for long. First, the Soviets took her husband, later she got into hands of NKVD. She was transported to a gulag in Uzbekistan (the USSR).
After a few months, Russia made an agreement with the Polish government in exile and announced amnesty for Polish citizens sent to Siberia, incarcerated in gulags and prisoners of NKVD. Thus, Hanka Ordonówna was released. Her way led through the Middle East. When a mass exodus from the USSR was being organized, it turned out how many children happened to be on the ‘inhuman island.’
Ordonka became involved in helping extremely exhausted war orphans. She created an orphanage for Polish children who were found by volunteers in the country. Next, she evacuated them to Mumbai. They got to a children’s part of the camp for Polish refugees in India. Maharaja Jam Sahib Digvijaysinhji helped them by persuading other Indian princes to support 500 Polish orphans financially until the end of World War II.
Thus, aroung 5000 children survived the war in India. Ordonka depicted their lot in her book ‘Tułacze dzieci’ (‘Wandering children’). In the book, she outlined the profiles of the Polish orphans in a very realistic and touching way, but at the same time without sentimentality.
During World War II, whenever she could, Hanka Ordonówna gave concerts to soldiers. Until her dying days, she sang and performed. However, tuberculosis, from which she had suffered before the war, made her life misery. The artist died in 1950. Her hit ‘Miłość ci wszystko wybaczy' (‘Love will forgive you everything’) is still very popular.
